Era Five: Civil War and Reconstruction (1850 - 1877)

William Lloyd Garrison, “To the Public,” 1831

Truisms by William Lloyd Garrison, 1831

“Kidnapping a Free Negro to be Sold into Slavery,” image, 1834

Angelina Grimké’s “Appeal to the Christian Women of the South,” 1836

Angelina Grimké Weld’s Speech at Pennsylvania Hall, 1838

Antislavery Convention, c.1845

Fugitive Slave Act, 1850

Samuel A. Cartwright, “Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race”, 1851

DeBow’s Review, “The South and Her Remedies,” 1851

Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” 1852

Excerpt from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852

Frederick Law Olmstead, A Journey in the Seaboard States, 1856

Dred Scott v. Sanford, 1857

Thomas R. R. Cobb, “An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery, 1858”

James Henry Hammond, “The Mudsill Speech,” 1858

Abraham Lincoln, “House Divided Speech,” 1858

William Seward, “On the Irrepressible Conflict,” 1858

John Brown

Henry David Thoreau, "A Plea for Captain John Brown," 1859

Governor Hammond’s Letters on Slavery, 1860

James D. B. DeBow, “The South’s Power of Self-Protection,” 1860

Abraham Lincoln’s “Cooper Union Address,” 1860

Republican Party Platform, 1860

Hinton Rowan Helper, The Impending Crisis, 1860

South Carolina’s Declaration of Secession, 1860

Confederate Constitution, 1861

Jefferson Davis’ First Inaugural Address, 1861

Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, 1861

Alexander Stephens, “The Cornerstone Speech,” 1861

Conscription Act, 1862 (Confederate)

Homestead Act, 1862

Morrill Act, 1862

The Emancipation Proclamation, 1863

Conscription Act, 1863 (Union)

Joshua Chamberlain’s Description of Gettysburg

The Gettysburg Address, 1863

Sojourner Truth, "Ain't I a Woman?", 1863

Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, 1865

Robert E. Lee’s Farewell Address to His Troops

Mississippi Black Code, 1865

The 13th Amendment

Tennessee Black Codes, 1865-1866

The Freedmen’s Bureau Report on the Memphis Race Riots of 1866

The 14th Amendment

Samuel J. May, Some Recollections of our Anti-Slavery Conflict, 1869

Black Friday, 1869

The 15th Amendment

The Credit Mobilier Scandal, 1872

The Civil War Photographs of Mathew Brady

The Political Cartoons of Thomas Nast

Other Civil War and Reconstruction Era Political Cartoons